1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains generally to the field of display units that provide flight plan information to the pilot or flight crew of an aircraft.
2. Description of the Related Art
Pilots interact with flight systems; for example, one such flight system is a flight management system (“FMS”). Electronic display units have facilitated user interaction between the pilot and the FMS, and the introduction of window-based formats has allowed the pilot to view graphically-depicted windows on the screen. Through the use of a menu and/or a graphical user interface (“GUI”), the pilot may select a page from a plurality of pages.
The FMS is known to perform a variety of functions to help the crew in the management of the flight. These functions are known to those skilled and could include FMS initialization, flight plan set-up, thrust settings selection, weight and balance monitoring, flight log tracking, sensor monitoring, FMS database section, and/or default settings review or selection. In the performance of each of these functions, a plurality of pages could be presented in a window on the screen of the display unit.
During aircraft operations on the ground or in flight, a pilot may want to access the same page on more than one occasion through the use of a GUI. This means that the pilot may have to go to the menu and select the desired page, and if the page isn't presented as the front page, he or she may have to drill down one or more pages to access the desired page. Faced with the possibility of performing these tasks, the time a pilot spends interacting with the FMS may be spent inefficiently.
Moreover, there might be an occasion or event at which time the pilot may want to be access the desired page or have such page displayed; however, without an alarm being set or vigilance being taken to monitor the actual occurrence of the occasion or event, such occurrence may pass without pilot awareness.